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The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

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Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#241

Post by brewdad »

ars wrote: post #59
avs733 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say with confidence that it might mean the government stays out of their medicare /s

I get the joke, but after having dealt with them, I would personally love it if the government got out of medicare. Just give everyone a voucher and let them buy their own health insurance using it. The amount of paperwork, and details to keep track of and calculate was absolutely unreal. I have BOXES full of paper from medicare, there was so much I could barely keep up. The worst was the arcane and utterly confusing…

Sounds a lot like private insurance.

Handing out "free" money has worked so well for higher education. How will vouchers solve the problem of skyrocketing health care costs?

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#242

Post by bertil »

njloof wrote: post #191
thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well he's making it sound like a bad thing, so I wanted to know what exactly he meant.

Prop 8, for example. Or Prop 13.

Prop 8, officially titled Proposition 8 - Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry, was a statewide ballot proposition in California. On November 4, 2008, voters approved the measure and made same-sex marriage illegal in California.

On June 6th, 1978, nearly two-thirds of California's voters passed Proposition 13, reducing property tax rates on homes, businesses and farms by about 57%. The Environment Prior to Proposition 13. Prior to Proposition 13, the property tax rate throughout California averaged a little less than 3% of market value.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#243

Post by boundlessdreamz »

rayiner wrote: post #151
netcan wrote: post #82

I'm strangely moved by this whole thing. It's a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I'm not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can & can't do. On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling struct…

Democracy is fine. The intellectual class just needs to learn to respect it. There is pretty much nothing that deserves to be decided by the will of the people--their values, their emotions, their world views--than the question of "what body politic do I want to belong to?" The deep irony of the anti-Brexit narrative is that the same people would froth at the mouth if you said "India would've been better off economic…

I know the point you are trying to make but India wouldn't have been better off economically under British Empire. British decimated the Indian economy

http://www.thehindu.com/2005/07/10/stories/2005071002301000....

As the painstaking statistical work of the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6 per cent in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3 per cent at that time, to as low as 3.8 per cent in 1952.

Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th Century, "the brightest jewel in the British Crown" was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#244

Post by delboy88 »

katpas wrote: post #66

One of the original suggested referendum questions was "Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union?" It was rejected in favour of "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of European Union" because "some participants in our research did not know that the United Kingdom is currently a member of the European Union."* If that wasn't evidence the referendum was a bad idea... * http://…

You seem to be implying that people who did not know the UK was in the EU would vote to leave rather than to stay.

If that's what you're implying, where's the evidence to support that?

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#245

Post by njloof »

ars wrote: post #59
avs733 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say with confidence that it might mean the government stays out of their medicare /s

I get the joke, but after having dealt with them, I would personally love it if the government got out of medicare. Just give everyone a voucher and let them buy their own health insurance using it. The amount of paperwork, and details to keep track of and calculate was absolutely unreal. I have BOXES full of paper from medicare, there was so much I could barely keep up. The worst was the arcane and utterly confusing…

By contrast, the paperwork I do (as a client) under Canadian single payer Medicare is nil, and my supplementary insurance (vision/dental) can be filled out online in minutes.

Sounds like you need a better system in the US. Maybe not so many different stakeholders in the system?

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#246

Post by pavel_lishin »

chongli wrote: post #20
mikeash wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of certain American voters saying they support Trump just because they want to tear the system down. I don't think they realize what tearing the system down would actually mean.

When you're in an abusive relationship it's always harder to pack up and leave than it is to stay. You've gotta do it though, because the long term consequences of living with your abuser are unacceptable.

Voting for Trump isn't leaving an abusive relationship, it's setting the house on fire.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#247

Post by Daishiman »

emsy wrote: post #167

What I're read so far about pro-leavers: -They are stupid. -They are xenophobic racists (over 50% of the population!). -Trump welcomes the Brexit, so being pro-leave is stupid. -Old people vote "leave" since they don't have to face the consequences as long as the young people, and old people have no clue. -"Leave" votes come mainly from E.U. subsidized areas, thus they bite the hand that feeds them. -Pro-leave doesn'…

Well, what are those reasons that are so impactful that people should have voted "Leave"? Because I have not really heard a single informed argument about that, and the public discourse for Leave has shown an enormous gap in knowledge about what the EU actually is.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#248

Post by jessaustin »

27182818284 wrote: post #206
yincrash wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland is also much smaller than the UK or California in most respects.

>Switzerland is also much smaller than the UK or California in most respects. This comes up all the time, especially in "Why can't the US do X?" discussions but isn't it just the equivalent of shouting down with "That will never scale!" Of course it might not be exactly the same. Maybe the bigger country will need more servers spun up or a tweaked algorithm (to continue the analogy), but just saying a country is smal…

Maybe the bigger nation just shouldn't be so big?

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#249

Post by stephenr »

ars wrote: post #59
avs733 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say with confidence that it might mean the government stays out of their medicare /s

I get the joke, but after having dealt with them, I would personally love it if the government got out of medicare. Just give everyone a voucher and let them buy their own health insurance using it. The amount of paperwork, and details to keep track of and calculate was absolutely unreal. I have BOXES full of paper from medicare, there was so much I could barely keep up. The worst was the arcane and utterly confusing…

Americans always seem to just assume that because their unique way of doing doesn't work, is unworkable and should be abandoned, usually in a "let the corporations fix it" kind of way.

- Banking regulations

- government backed healthcare

- gun control

- education system

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#250

Post by ionised »

chirau wrote: post #187
cjjuice wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato was always cautious of Democracy. If you are interested I would recommend give his "Republic" a read.

In it is suggested a form of government called epistocracy. It has a lot of merit in my opinion. The basic principle is 'rule of the knowers'. We elect knowledgeable people into power and let them make decisions. We don't vote on what medication a sick child should get, why should we vote on what remedy a sick economy needs? Let the knowledgeable that we have chosen make the prescription.

We already have the knowledgeable in power, the banks.

They understand how global economics works better than anyone and they manipulate it to their own ends and to the detriment of all others.

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